Indian Intelligence Bureau, concerned by the gravity of the online war, has alerted the defence establishment.

India-Pakistan tensions are not restricted to battlefield alone. They have well spread out into the virtual space with hackers from both sides repeatedly attempting to deface sensitive sites. It is quite apparent that the new lot of hackers is much more equipped and trained. The hackers, according to officials, may be on the payroll of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence.

The first Pakistani hacker group-Pakistani Hackers Club-was formed by two 'hacktivists' who used the pseudonyms DoctorNuker and Mr Sweet. DoctorNuker took to hacking when he was a computer science student at Karachi University. Along with fellow hacker Dizasta (real name: Fahad Shamshek Khan), he started hacking into critical Indian and US servers. Pakistani hackers have recently broken into Indian sites, include those of Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), the Nuclear Science Centre (NSC) and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), and have accessed sensitive information relating to information relating to nuclear test management. The idea was to access crucial data secured under severely firewalled servers.

The Intelligence Bureau (IB), concerned by the gravity of the online war, has alerted the defence establishment. The ministry has sought the help of cyber security firms for safeguarding the sites. There has been a history of infiltration into Indian sites with sensitive information by Pakistani hackers. The first infiltration into BARC was in 1998. Milworm, a Pakistan-based hacker group, had hacked it. At least one spy program has been detected in a BARC mail server recently. The first intrusion into IGCAR was reported in January last year when G-Force, a Pakistani hacker group, defaced its main server. Subsequently, other servers in IGCAR have been repeatedly hacked by G-Force.

Hackers getting hot
Some Indian and Pakistani hackers pledged support to the US, while the US and Chinese computer security experts braced for an expected escalation in the cyber-war that has now drawn in hackers from many nations. Hackers from India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina and Malaysia, Marquis grove of security news portal said are now supporting pro-US hackers.

DoctorNuker, say IB officials, was the first hacker whose skills were recognised by the ISI and under the latter's directives, focused on critical Indian government servers (especially those relating to nuclear and atomic establishments).

But sources say the most active Pakistani hacker in the recent past has been a person impersonating as Rsnake, who started hacking from the Netherlands where he was working with a group of portals. Inspired by DoctorNuker, he started the hacker group G-Force from Holland. The ISI has now got him to Pakistan to coordinate other hackers targeting Indian websites, claim IB officials. The security of five Internet servers operated by the U.S. General Accounting Office was breached in December 2001 by a hacking group known as Anti India Crew. AIC posted a message at one of the defaced Web servers that included the statement: "We will hit the usa/ind/isr government servers until there is peace around us!"

AIC is part of a hacking coalition calling itself the Al-Qaeda Muslim Alliance. Other members include the GForce Pakistan hacking group and the Pakistan Hackerz Club. In recent months, AIC has attacked 28 Web sites in India. The GAO servers were the first U.S. government systems compromised by the group.